Asian collector snaps up $43m Modigliani in New York

An Asian collector splurged nearly $43 million on an Amadeo Modigliani painting in New York, scooping the top prize in an otherwise lackluster evening sale at Sotheby’s that kicked off the autumn auction season. The auction house sold $377 million worth of art amassed by self-made American billionaire Alfred Taubman, a former Sotheby’s chairman who did jail time for price fixing in 2002.

The two-and-a-half- hour auction saw strong bidding from America and Europe as well, but Asia’s acquisition of the Modigliani portrait underscores increasing purchasing power in the region. The painting, one of Modigliani’s last and dated 1919, went for $42.81 million, far above pre-sale estimates in excess of $25 million. Paulette Jourdain depicts the maid and later lover of his art dealer, Leopold Zborowski.

It came to the auction block for the first time and attracted bidding from five buyers, Sotheby’s said. Sotheby’s identified the buyer as a private Asian collector. The second highest lot was a 1976 landscape by Dutch-American abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning, Untitled XXI, which sold for $24.89 million, scraping its lowest pre-sale estimate of $25 million.